He was born on November 1, 1860,[5] in Philadelphia, one of seven sons,[6] to Dr. Richard Alexander Fullerton Penrose and Sarah Hannah Boies.[7] He was born into a prominent Old Philadelphian family of Cornish descent.[8] The family traced their American origins to Bartholomew Penrose, a Bristol shipbuilder, who was invited by William Penn to establish a shipyard in the Province of Pennsylvania.[9] He was a grandson of Speaker of the Pennsylvania Senate Charles B. Penrose and brother of gynecologist Charles Bingham Penrose and mining entrepreneurs Richard and Spencer Penrose. He was a descendant of the prominent Biddle family of Philadelphia.[10]
Penrose attended Episcopal Academy[11] and Harvard University. He was almost expelled from Harvard due to poor academics but was able to improve his grades by Senior year.[12] He graduated second in his class in 1881. After reading the law with the firm of Wayne MacVeagh and George Tucker Bispham,[13] he was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1883.[14]
Although Penrose wrote two books on political reform, he joined the political machine of Matthew Quay, a Pennsylvania Republican political boss.[15] In 1895, Penrose ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Philadelphia.[14] He was forced to withdraw from the race when his Democrat opponent released a photo of Penrose leaving a brothel at three o'clock in the morning.[13]
U.S. Senate and National Republican Party Committee
In 1897, the state legislature elected Penrose to the United States Senate over John Wanamaker.[3]
He created the development of "squeeze bills", in which he would have Pennsylvania colleagues enter bills into the Pennsylvania legislature that were negative toward major industries, such as railroads and banks, and promised to remove the bills after receiving sufficient political contributions from those industries.[3]
Penrose was elected Chairman of the State Republican Party in 1903, succeeding fellow Senator Matthew Quay.[18] A year later, Quay died, and Penrose was appointed to succeed him as the state's Republican National Committeeman.[19] He was the most powerful political operative in Pennsylvania for the next 17 years[20] and enabled figures like Richard Baldwin to advance through loyalty to his organization.[21]
In the 1912 presidential election, Penrose strongly supported incumbent President William Howard Taft over former President Theodore Roosevelt. To discredit Roosevelt in the three-way race that year, Penrose worked with Roosevelt's embittered Progressive rival, Robert M. La Follette, to establish a Senate committee to investigate sources of contributions to Roosevelt's 1904 and 1912 campaigns.[22] After a campaign that consisted of heavy attacks on Penrose, Roosevelt won Pennsylvania in the 1912 election, although Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the national vote.[23] Penrose was also a major supporter of Warren Harding, and helped the Ohio Senator win the 1920 Republican nomination.[24] Penrose's role in Harding's election helped earn Pennsylvanian Andrew W. Mellon the role of Secretary of the Treasury.[15]
In 1912, Penrose was forced out of power by the progressive faction of the party led by William Flinn.[25] Penrose did not stand for re-election to his national committee post. However, following Flinn's departure from the party to support Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party, Penrose was able to garner enough support to return to his post as national committeeman and would remain in the position until his death.[26][27]
Penrose was six foot four inches tall and was nicknamed "Big Grizzly". He had a huge appetite and was known to have a dozen eggs at breakfast and a full turkey at lunch.[12] He won a $1,000 bet in an eating contest of 50 oysters and a quart of bourbon that sent his opponent to the hospital.[30] He did not like people watching him eat and had screens set up to provide privacy when he dined at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia.[31]
An avid outdoorsman, Penrose enjoyed mountain exploration and big-game hunting. He was one of the 100 original members of the Boone and Crockett Club.[32] According to his hunting guide, W.G. (Bill) Manson, they had to spend a lot of time to find a horse big enough to carry Penrose and his custom saddle. The horse was called "Senator." After Penrose stopped riding, the horse was retired to pasture because no standard saddle would fit him.[33]
He never married and was known to boast of his love of prostitutes, stating that he didn't "believe in hypocrisy".[29]
In 1903 Penrose, along with his brothers and father, invested in the formation of the Utah Copper Company.[34]
Following Penrose's death, his lieutenant Joseph Grundy became one of the leaders of the Republican machine, but no one boss dominated the party as Penrose and his predecessors had.[24]
^Dapp, Rick. "Did You Know?". harrisburgmagazine.com. MH Magazine. Retrieved December 20, 2023.
^Charles Caldwell Hawley (2014). A Kennecott Story. The University of Utah Press. pp. 37–40.
^"Mount Penrose". peakvisor.com. Peak Visor. Retrieved December 21, 2023.
^"Bronze Maintenance". cpc.state.pa.us. Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee. Archived from the original on July 20, 2011. Retrieved November 28, 2009.
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